Encyclopedia of sacred theology - pagina 391

Chap.

II]

THIS PRINCIPIUM

course of reasoning,

is

AND OUR CONSCIOUSNESS

therefore absurd.

367

For you must accept

one of two things, either that each one personally must reason this out for himself, or that only a few are able to do this, so that the others is

must depend upon these few.

The

first

impossible, for the simple reason that not one-tenth per

men

are capable of entering upon and the second is equally impossible, since then you would substitute faith on human Moreover, faith authority in the place of faith in God. that the advanced belongs to more periods is not a demand how, then, of life, but it must be exercised from youth up would you have faith be born as the result of a study, of which the best are not capable until the years of mid-life ? cent, of the children of

the required investigation

;

;

It should also be observed,

how

in this

way

the faith of one

would continually be shocked by the mistakes in the invesWhat would it profit you, if you had tigation of another. reached a sufficient and satisfactory result for yourself ? Tomorrow a book appears with new objections, and then everything with you must remain unsettled, so long as you cannot successfully unnerve all those new objections. Scarcely, howbeen accomplished, when still another advances and thus you are engulfed in an endless whirl between doubt and faith. Worse still: after a study of more than twelve centuries spent on the Scriptures, there is yet no faintest outlook that these studies will ever lead to a satisfactory result. The conflict concerning the Holy Scriptures will most likely be continued till the final return of the Lord. How, then, can faith ever rest on the ever, has this

new

difficulties,

result of these studies as foundation, when its presence has been a necessity from the beginning, and when in those early

in which there was no question of these studies, was most vital and powerful ? For no single moment, therefore, may we entertain the admission that argument may be the ground of conviction. This would be a " passing into another kind," which is logically condemned. Faith gives highest assurance, where in our own consciousness

times, faith

it

rests

immediately on the testimony of God but withouf everything that announces itself as faith is

this support,

;

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